Ford has rehired experienced veteran engineers — nicknamed "greybeards" — after finding that artificial intelligence alone could not deliver the quality it had expected. Senior executive Charles Poon admitted the company had wrongly assumed that simply introducing AI and feeding it existing design requirements would produce a high-quality product. The reversal is notable because it comes only a year after Ford chief executive Jim Farley criticised American blue-collar workers and predicted AI would displace "literally half" of US jobs, making the climbdown an embarrassing one for the carmaker.

Ford is not alone in this so-called "AI boomerang". A 2025 Forrester Research report found that 55 per cent of employers regretted cutting staff in favour of AI, and British software firm Orgvue reported the same proportion of businesses having second thoughts about AI-driven redundancies. Separate research suggested nearly a third of firms that cut jobs due to AI productivity gains later rehired people for the exact same roles, while another study predicted that half of companies replacing customer service or operational staff with AI will have to restaff those positions — often under new job titles — within the year.